scholarly journals Body Representation in Anorexia Nervosa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anouk Keizer ◽  
Manja Engel
Keyword(s):  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Body Representation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Size Perception ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Multisensory Information ◽  
The Brain

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder that mainly affects young women. One of the most striking symptoms of this disorder is the distorted experience of body size and shape. Patients are by definition underweight, but experience and perceive their body as bigger than it in reality is. This body representation disturbance has fascinated scientists for many decades, leading to a rich and diverse body of literature on this topic. Research shows that AN patients do not only think that their body is bigger than reality, and visually perceive it as such, but that other sensory modalities also play an important role in oversized body experiences. Patients for example have an altered (enlarged) size perception of tactile stimuli, and move their body as if it is larger than it actually is. Moreover, patients with AN appear to process and integrate multisensory information differently than healthy individuals, especially in relation to body size. This leads to the conclusion that the representation of the size of the body in the brain is enlarged. This conclusion has important implications for the treatment of body representation disturbances in AN. Traditionally treatment of AN is very cognitive in nature, it is possible however that changed cognitions with respect to body size experiences do not lead to actual changes in metric representations of body size stored in the brain. Recently a few studies have been published in which a multisensory approach in treatment of body representation disturbance in AN has been found to be effective in treating this symptom of AN.

scholarly journals Visual body size adaptation and estimation of tactile distance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regine Zopf ◽  
Veronika Kosourikhina ◽  
Kevin R. Brooks ◽  
Vince Polito ◽  
Ian Stephen
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Adaptation Effect ◽  
The Body ◽  
Size Perception ◽  
Visual Adaptation ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Body Images ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Adaptation Effects

Estimating the size of bodies is crucial for interactions with physical and social environments. Body size perception is malleable and can be altered using visual adaptation paradigms. However, it is unclear whether such visual adaptation effects also transfer to other modalities and influence, for example, the perception of tactile distances. In this study we employed a visual adaptation paradigm. Participants were exposed to images of expanded or contracted versions of self- or other-identity bodies. Before and after this adaptation they were asked to manipulate the width of body images to appear as “normal” as possible. We replicated an effect of visual adaptation, such that the body size selected as most “normal” was larger after exposure to expanded and thinner after exposure to contracted adaptation stimuli. In contrast, we did not find evidence that this adaptation effect transfers to distance estimates for paired tactile stimuli delivered to the abdomen. A Bayesian analysis showed that our data provide moderate evidence that there is no effect of visual body size adaptation on the estimation of spatial parameters in a tactile task. This suggests that visual body size adaptation effects do not transfer to somatosensory body size representations.

Body Size Estimation in Anorexia Nervosa

1988 ◽  
Vol 153 (S2) ◽  
pp. 23-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Whitehouse ◽  
Christopher P. L. Freeman ◽  
Annette Annandale
Keyword(s):  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Normal Weight ◽  
The Body ◽  
Size Perception ◽  
Size Estimation ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Body Size Perception ◽  
Body Size Estimation

Clinicians who deal with patients with anorexia nervosa are well acquainted with their patients' inability to recognise their emaciation. The patients' insistence that they are normal weight or even overweight, against clear evidence to the contrary, led Bruch (1962) to state that the misperception reaches “delusional proportions”. Studies of body size perception in anorexia nervosa that have used the ‘body part’ method have invariably found that the patients overestimate their body size (Slade & Russell, 1973; Crisp & Kalucy, 1974; Pierloot & Houben, 1978; Garner et al, 1976; Button et al, 1977; Fries, 1977; Casper et al, 1979) but the majority have not found any significant difference in size estimation between patients and controls (Slade, 1985).

Body Image in Anorexia Nervosa

1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 224-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Garner
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Body Satisfaction ◽  
Body Part ◽  
The Body ◽  
Size Perception ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Size Estimation ◽  
Psychological Disturbance ◽  
Body Image Disturbances

Despite much recent interest in the objective measurement of body image in anorexia nervosa, many questions remain regarding basic mechanisms responsible for the findings as well as their meaning in the disorder. It is unclear if “whole body” measures assess the same underlying phenomena as the “body part” method, and it is unclear if body image disturbances are etiologic or a byproduct of anorexia nervosa. The possible association between self-esteem and body satisfaction and the relationship of the latter variable to actual size estimation supports the hypothesis that size perception may be closely tied to satisfaction with non-physical aspects of self. Finally it must be determined if over estimation is a function of a general psychological disturbance or of a deficit of specific interest in this disorder. Despite these questions, the way in which anorexic patients see themselves as well as the cognitive and affective responses to this perception remains an interesting and potentially fruitful area of study with this disorder.

Mortal Body, Immortal Mind

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Hans Goller
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Activity Data ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Near Death Experiences ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Alternative Theories

Neuroscientists keep telling us that the brain produces consciousness and consciousness does not survive brain death because it ceases when brain activity ceases. Research findings on near-death-experiences during cardiac arrest contradict this widely held conviction. They raise perplexing questions with regard to our current understanding of the relationship between consciousness and brain functions. Reports on veridical perceptions during out-of-body experiences suggest that consciousness may be experienced independently of a functioning brain and that self-consciousness may continue even after the termination of brain activity. Data on studies of near-death-experiences could be an incentive to develop alternative theories of the body-mind relation as seen in contemporary neuroscience.

Triadic body representations in the human cerebral cortex and peripheral nerves

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noriaki Kanayama ◽  
Kentaro Hiromitsu
Keyword(s):  
Peripheral Nerves ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
Body Schema ◽  
Body Representation ◽  
Neural System ◽  
The Body ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
The Brain

Is the body reducible to neural representation in the brain? There is some evidence that the brain contributes to the functioning of the body from neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and lesion studies. Well-known dyadic taxonomy of the body schema and the body image (hereafter BSBI) is based primarily on the evidence in brain-damaged patients. Although there is a growing consensus that the BSBI exists, there is little agreement on the dyadic taxonomy because it is not a concrete and common concept across various research fields. This chapter tries to investigate the body representation in the cortex and nervous system in terms of sensory modality and psychological function using two different approaches. The first approach is to review the neurological evidence and cortical area which is related to body representation, regardless of the BSBI, and then to reconsider how we postulate the BSBI in our brain. It can be considered that our body representation could be constructed by the whole of the neural system, including the cortex and peripheral nerves. The second approach is to revisit the BSBI conception from the viewpoint of recent neuropsychology and propose three types of body representation: body schema, body structural description, and body semantics. This triadic taxonomy is considered consistent with the cortical networks based on the evidence of bodily disorders due to brain lesions. These two approaches allow to reconsider the BSBI more carefully and deeply and to give us the possibility that the body representation could be underpinned with the network in the brain.

scholarly journals Hand size underestimation grows during childhood

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucilla Cardinali ◽  
Andrea Serino ◽  
Monica Gori
Keyword(s):  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Hand Size ◽  
Infancy And Childhood ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Sensory Maps ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Cortical body size representations are distorted in the adult, from low-level motor and sensory maps to higher levels multisensory and cognitive representations. Little is known about how such representations are built and evolve during infancy and childhood. Here we investigated how hand size is represented in typically developing children aged 6 to 10. Participants were asked to estimate their hand size using two different sensory modalities (visual or haptic). We found a distortion (underestimation) already present in the youngest children. Crucially, such distortion increases with age and regardless of the sensory modality used to access the representation. Finally, underestimation is specific for the body as no bias was found for object estimation. This study suggests that the brain does not keep up with the natural body growth. However, since motor behavior nor perception were impaired, the distortion seems functional and/or compensated for, for proper interaction with the external environment.

Body-Size Estimation in Anorexia Nervosa

1995 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Molinari
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Body Size ◽  
The Body ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Size Estimation ◽  
Image Perception ◽  
Pelvic Area ◽  
Body Size Estimation ◽  
Different Parts

The aim was to explore the body-image perception of a group of 20 hospitalised anorexic patients, aged 18 to 21 years, undergoing a period of treatment. The instrument used was the Askevold nonverbal perception test as modified by Allamani and colleagues in 1978 to assess perception of the dimensions of different parts of the body by exploiting the capacity to project them into space. The four parts were the head, the thoracic area, the abdominal area, and the pelvic area. Analysis of responses indicated that anorexic patients overestimated the abdominal and the pelvic areas much more than the 20 members of the control group (50% vs 30%). The areas of the head and thorax were perceived almost in their real dimensions by the anorexic patients but were underestimated by the control group.

scholarly journals The Mechanisms of Size Constancy

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 253-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Sperandio ◽  
Irene Sperandio ◽  
Philippe A. Chouinard
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Distance Perception ◽  
Brain Area ◽  
Size Perception ◽  
Retinal Images ◽  
Size Constancy ◽  
Constant Size ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
The Brain

Size constancy is the result of cognitive scaling operations that enable us to perceive an object as having the same size when presented at different viewing distances. In this article, we review the literature on size and distance perception to form an overarching synthesis of how the brain might combine retinal images and distance cues of retinal and extra-retinal origin to produce a perceptual visual experience of a world where objects have a constant size. A convergence of evidence from visual psychophysics, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, electrophysiology and neuroimaging highlight the primary visual cortex (V1) as an important node in mediating size–distance scaling. It is now evident that this brain area is involved in the integration of multiple signals for the purposes of size perception and does much more than fulfil the role of an entry position in a series of hierarchical cortical events. We also discuss how information from other sensory modalities can also contribute to size–distance scaling and shape our perceptual visual experience.

scholarly journals Challenging the boundaries of the physical self: purely distal cues in the environment impact body ownership

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaudia Grechuta ◽  
Javier De La Torre ◽  
Belén Rubio Ballester ◽  
Paul F.M.J. Verschure
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Environment Impact ◽  
Rubber Hand ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Sensory Signals ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Multisensory Cues ◽  
Multisensory Information

AbstractThe unique ability to identify one’s own body and experience it as one’s own is fundamental in goal-oriented behavior and survival. However, the mechanisms underlying the so-called body ownership are yet not fully understood. The plasticity of body ownership has been studied using two experimental methods or their variations. Specifically, the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI), where the tactile stimuli are externally generated, or the moving RHI which implies self-initiated movements. Grounded in these paradigms, evidence has demonstrated that body ownership is a product of bottom-up reception of self- and externally-generated multisensory information and top-down comparison between the predicted and the actual sensory stimuli. Crucially, provided the design of the current paradigms, where one of the manipulated cues always involves the processing of a proximal modality sensing the body or its surface (e.g., touch), the contribution of sensory signals which pertain to the environment remain elusive. Here we propose that, as any robust percept, body ownership depends on the integration and prediction of all the sensory stimuli, and therefore it will depend on the consistency of purely distal sensory signals pertaining to the environment. To test our hypothesis, we create an embodied goal-oriented task and manipulate the predictability of the surrounding environment by changing the congruency of purely distal multisensory cues while preserving bodily and action-driven signals entirely predictable. Our results empirically reveal that the way we represent our body is contingent upon all the sensory stimuli including purely distal and action-independent signals which pertain to the environment.

scholarly journals Implicit and Explicit Body Representations

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew R. Longo
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Information ◽  
Body Representation ◽  
Position Sense ◽  
The Body ◽  
Size Perception ◽  
Somatosensory Processing ◽  
Body Representations ◽  
Size And Shape ◽  
Tactile Localization ◽  
Somatosensory Information

Several forms of perception require that sensory information be referenced to representations of the size and shape of the body. This requirement is especially acute in somatosensation in which the main receptor surface (i.e., the skin) is itself coextensive with the body. This paper reviews recent research investigating the body representations underlying somatosensory information processing, including abilities such as tactile localization, tactile size perception, and position sense. These representations show remarkably large and stereotyped distortions of represented body size and shape. Intriguingly, these distortions appear to mirror distortions characteristic of somatosensory maps, though in attenuated form. In contrast, when asked to make overt judgments about perceived body form, participants are generally quite accurate. This pattern of results suggests that higher-level somatosensory processing relies on a class of implicit body representation, distinct from the conscious body image. I discuss the implications of these results for understanding the nature of body representation and the factors that influence it.

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